BELL, Sir CHARLES, an eminent surgeon, whose discoveries in the nervous system have given him a European fame, was• born at Edinburgh in 1778, and while a mere youth assisted his brother John (afterwards noticed) in his anatomical lectures and demonstrations. In 1797 he was admitted a member of the Edinburgh college of sur geons, and soon after appointed one of the surgeons of the royal infirmary. In 1809 he proceeded to Loudon, and for sonic years lectured with great success on anatomy and surgery at the academy in Great Windmill street. Admitted, in 1812, a member of the royal college of surgeons, London, he was elected one of the surgeons of the Middlesex hospital, in which institution he delivered clinical lectures, and raised it to the high est repute. To obtain a knowledge of gunshot wounds, he twice relinquished his Lon don eng-agements--the first time after the battle of Corunua in 1809, when he visited the wounded landed on the southern coasts of England; the other after the battle of Water loo, when he repaired to Brussels and was put in charge of a hospital with 300 men, In 1824, he was appointed senior professor of anatomy and surgery to the royal college of surgeons, London, and subsequently a member of the council. On the establishment of the London university, now university college, in 1826, B. was placed at the head of their new medical school. He delivered the general opening lecture in his own section, and followed it by a regular course of characteristic lectures on physiology; but soon resigned, and confined himself to his extensive practice, which was chiefly in nervous affections. In 1831 he was one of the five eminent men in science knighted on the accession of William IV., the others being sir John Herschel, sir David Brewster, sir
John Leslie, and sir James Ivory. In 1836 he was elected professor of surgery in the university. of Edinburgh. He was a fellow of the royal societies of London and Edin burgh, and a member of some other learned bodies. Author of various works on. sur gery and the nervous system, and editor, jointly with lord Brougham, of Paley's Evi dences of Natural Religion, B. was one of the eight distinguished men selected to write the celebrated Bridgewater Treatises, his contribution being on The hand, its Mechanism. and Vital Endowments, as evincing Design. (1834). He died suddenly, April 30, 1842. Among his nrincipal works are The Anatomy of the Brain Explained in a Series of Engravings, 12 plates (Lond. 1802. 4to); A &ries of Engravings Explaining the Course of the Nerves, (Lond. 1804, 4to); Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting, plates (Loud. 1806, 4to); posthumous edition much enlarged, entitled The Anatomy and Philos ophy of Expression as connected with the Fine Arts (Lond. 1844, 8vo); A System of Operative Surgery, 2 vols. (Lond. 1807-9; 2d ed. 1814); Dissertation on Gunshot Wounds (Loud. 1814, 2 vols. 8vo); Anatomy and Physiology of the Human Body, 3 vols. (1816); various papers on the nervous system which originally appeared in the Philosophical Transactions; Exposition of the Natural System of the Nerves of the Human Body (1824); Institutes of Surgery (Edin. 2 vols. 1838, 12mo); Animal Mechanics, contributed to the Library for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1828); Nervous System of the Human Body (1830), 4to. Sec Correspondence of Sir Charles R (1870).